Adventures in sewing – by men, for men.

Category Archives: Knits

Making my own boxerbriefs has been on my project backlog for a while. I’ve sewn woven boxer shorts a few times, some very recently, but woven boxers are not my favorites. For me, knit boxerbriefs are definitely more comfortable to wear and they don’t bunch up in close-fitting pants like jeans. Continue reading →

Though I like the challenge of working on intricate shirt projects, I also love to make more casual wear, especially hoodies.

For the fall, I’ve started a hoodie making project with several goals in mind. The first, of course is to make hoodies. The second is to try out MakeMyPattern.com, a free online service that drafts patterns for you based on your measurements, and provides them as a print/cut/tape PDF download.

And the third is to develop a hoodie pattern I can use in a course to teach beginning sewists. The Sips N’ Sews studio offers a bootcamp course to complete newbies. It teaches basic machine operation, measurements, fabric, and patterns. The students leave the class ready to work on their first project. I think a hoodie can be an ideal first project for a new sewist. And the MakeMyPattern.com hoodie is ideal in several respects:

It is free, so students don’t have to spend extra money on a commercial pattern.

It is drafted to the student’s measurements, so this makes an end-run around finding the proper size for a commercial pattern.

It is a pullover, rather than a zip-front, so there are no zippers for a newbie sewist to cope with.

It has raglan sleeves, so attaching sleeves means sewing six nearly straight-line seams.

Sweatshirt fleece is a relatively stable knit fabric, so it won’t pose too many difficulties to a beginning student.

The only difficult parts are attaching the hood to the neckline, and attaching cuffs and waistband which are made from rib knit. Constructing the hood does requires sewing around curves, but this is not as challenging as attaching a sleeve to an armscye and there is no easing involved. Continue reading →